the challenges of motherhood

Well, for some time now I have been telling myself that I would post more regularly and let my reader (I think there's only one person who reads my blog now - thanks mom!) see more deeply into my heart and life. The area I have been putting off writing about is my boys. My husband and I have three boys ages 14, 11 (12 on 2/2) and 8. They are the joy of our lives. And they have stretched and challenged us more than we ever imagined they could.

First off, let me tell you that I LOVE being a mom. Before I had children I was not all that enthused about being a mom but once I had our oldest my heart was totally taken. I love the challenge of raising children to be responsible, caring adults and I love the privilege of watching them grow and develop and mature. My boys are so precious to me. I am honored to have the role of mother in their lives.

The most challenging part of being a mother for me (other than potty-training - those experiences still give me nightmares!) is the fact that my two oldest boys have a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome. Oh, I have learned so much by the experience of raising children with special needs. And my heart goes out to all parents out there who are. This experience has really opened my eyes to so many things. First, that there is a grief process that parents go through as they are raising children with special needs. When we are expecting our children we have hopes and dreams that we aren't even aware of and when we discover that our children have disabilites, we have to let go of some or many of these hopes and dreams. And of course there is often a feeling of guilt that we are grieving over our children - but I've learned to just accept the grief and allow it to work through me so I can get to the other side - acceptance and hope and cherishing the life God has given us.

There is so much more I have learned but I think I'll save it for other posts. I am hoping to write a little about each of my boys in the next week - maybe even have them write about themselves as well. They have blessed my life so richly and I hope they will bless yours as well.

Can you say "BRRRRRRRRRR!"?

... WIND CHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 1 PM EST FRIDAY...
WIND CHILLS OF 15 TO 20 BELOW WILL CONTINUE TONIGHT AND INTO FRIDAY MORNING.
A WIND CHILL ADVISORY MEANS THAT VERY COLD AIR TEMPERATURES... OR A COMBINATION OF COLD AIR TEMPERATURES AND WIND... WILL LEAD TO FROSTBITE OR HYPOTHERMIA IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN. IF YOU MUST VENTURE OUTDOORS... MAKE SURE YOU WEAR A HAT AND GLOVES.

so many books, so little time!

Here's a meme of books you may have read from Ben's blog. Thought I'd kick off the New Year with it. If anyone chooses to do this on your blog, please let me know. I am always looking for good recommendations.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Mark in a different color the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - twice
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 1 1/2 of the 3
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - in highschool
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - in highschool I think
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - hs (in highschool)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - 2 or 3 times now
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - a few in hs
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - hs
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - hs
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - I've read about 1/3
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - I've read 3 of them
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - hs
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - a few chapters
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - the entire series
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - currently reading
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - hs
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - I can't remember for sure - maybe in college
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - teacher read to class in elementary school
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - mom read it to me as a child and I read it to my boys
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - I think in hs
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - I think I read it in French in hs
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

books

In the past couple of weeks I've read two books. The first came highly recommended to me - Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I think when a book or movie comes highly recommended I build it up a little too much in my head and by the time I read/see it I feel disappointed. This was definitely a good book but not my favorite. It is about an old man remembering back on his days with the circus during the great depression. I wish I had a book group to discuss it with. In an interview with the author at the end of the book she mentions how she parallels this story to the story of Jacob in Genesis and frankly I'm just not seeing it.


This past week I read this. Through the Shadowlands contains a brief biograpy of C.S. Lewis and of his wife Joy Davidman. It tells us how they met and how their relationship developed. It was very interesting and inspiring. I happened upon this book in the Bargain Bookstore and thought I would enjoy it - and I did. I often build up a great theologian, writer, artist in my head to be about perfect. Its usually encouraging to get to know these famous folks and find out what weaknesses and imperfections made them just as human as the rest of us. And at the same time it is inspiring because they did live their lives exceptionally as well.

Here's my hang-up as a reader. I like to read. I like to read different genre's but I tend to stay with Christian literature mostly. Which sometimes is flat or just gets boring. So I branch out and read some of the bestsellers - which are usually full of complex characters and amazing details. But then sometimes I feel dragged down by the depravity that is depicted. My heart says "I don't want to know that people are capable of doing such things. I like my sheltered little world. I've dealt with enough of my own pain and depravity in my life."

Then I think, how am I going to relate to this world I live in if I shelter myself. Not that I need to go down every depraved path possible but should I really stick strictly to Christian authors? I think the answer is no, of course. So I guess I'll just keep doing what I am doing which is mixing it up and staying away from those books that when I read the backs seem like they will be too disturbing or upseting to me. Sometimes I think I'm just a big wimp!

the Scratch Test

Today, I took my middle son, Jay, to the allergist for a scratch test. This is where they give him about 40ish "pokes" in his back with little plastic "pokey-things" (the technical term, I believe). Each poke is a different possible allergen. The reason for this testing is because Jay is just miserable in the spring time with allergy symptoms. It makes it difficult for him to get much accomplished in school at the end of the year. And I am hoping for something to control it better than the over-the-counter remedies we've been using.

I wish I could post a photo of his back after the "pokes". The side where they were testing tree and grass pollens and weeds looked like he had been bitten by a couple dozen mosquitoes. I was very impressed with him because he was so anxious about getting poked but he held it together and never let out a full scream (which the entire office would have heard). He also laid still on his stomach another 15 minutes without touching his back even though he complained that it itched.

Turns out that he has some severe allergies to the tree and grass pollens that are in our area April-June. So now we are discussing whether we want to put him through routine allergy shots - anywhere from once a week to once every 8-12 weeks throughout the year - or just try to use a few prescription meds in the spring to control it. I can already hear the screams that will come when the give him the shots. Will he get used to them or will it be more trouble than its worth? I hate making these decisions.

Face your Manga

Yeah - I don't know. Does it look like me at all?

You know you're a child of the 70's if...

First off I want to apologize to my devoted readers (I am talking to all 8 of you) for not updating my blog in almost 2 months. I plead busyness - school began, fall activities began and its a busy time with the special needs ministry....and worst of all I now have a facebook page which is just one more time sucker in my life! But I'm back.

This will not be a post where I list all the ways you know you were a child of the 70's. Instead I will just tell you of the two moments that this was made clear to me yesterday by my children.

First, my 13 y/o son was trying to call a family friend, who is an older lady who does not have call waiting or voicemail (or a cell phone - eek!). So Sam dials and listens and he is making a funny face, says he doesn't know what this is and hands me the phone. "It's a busy signal", I say. He still has the same confused, blank expression. This is when I realize that not only does he not recognize the annoying intermittent tone but he has never even heard the term "busy signal". I wasn't sure if I wanted to laugh or cry.

Then, as I was driving with my 8 y/o he began talking to me about seeing men on TV who were twirling and throwing sticks with the ends lit on fire. He asks me if I've ever seen this and I say yes I have on TV. (of course I am thinking about luau at the end of the Brady Bunch episode when they are in Hawaii) Then on the ride home he is talking about this man who was talking to a statue and when he watched the fire show he said, "I wish Oliver could see this". At this point, sadly, a light bulb goes on in my head and I ask Luke if he watched the Brady Bunch at his friends house that afternoon. I actually remember that the "bad guy" would talk to this idol he named Oliver!!! What does that say about my upbringing? It says I watched A LOT of Brady Bunch reruns after school each day.

So there is my trip down memory lane yesterday. What do you remember about the days gone by when you were a child?